


Beware of Cat

by penlex



Series: little cuts [13]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Gender-Neutral Honorifics, Gift Giving, Holidays, Humor, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Platonic Relationships, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Pranks and Practical Jokes, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Thor Being Loki's Straight Man, Ugly Holiday Sweaters, Winter Solstice, Yule
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-11 21:57:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16861012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penlex/pseuds/penlex
Summary: Loki gives the Avengers holiday gifts. Entirely altruistically, of course.





	Beware of Cat

**Author's Note:**

> Much artistic license taken with the tradition of the Swedish Cat.

The body of the sweater is a hectic geometric pattern in phosphorescently vibrant shades of orange and lavender. On the front of it is a hauntingly realistic depiction of a reindeer, complete with antlers that branch out over the shoulders and beady, shining black eyes that Steve is steadfastly choosing to believe are buttons but which almost definitely are not. As he steps closer to it where it sits on top of the dresser in his room at Avengers Compound (which he had definitely locked up when he'd left it yesterday), Steve is uncomfortably aware of the power the sweater exudes. It doesn't seem overtly hostile, headache inducing pattern and possibly sentient illustration aside, but Steve is still hesitant to touch it. Steve might not be known for his sense of caution, but he hasn't suffered any strange and unthinkable consequences from thoughtlessly picking up something magical yet and he'd like to keep it that way as long as possible.

Sitting on the dresser just to the right of the sweater is a small Christmas gift tag shaped like a sprig of holly. Steve quickly flicks it over and leaps backwards, just in case. When nothing happens, he creeps forward again to read it. In sparkly lavender gel ink that matches the shade in the sweater perfectly, the tag simply says 'Happy Holidays, Captain' in carefully neat print. Well, that answers exactly zero questions.

It's obviously magical, so chances are good it came from a magical person. It's probably not from Wanda. Steve doesn't think she could dream up something this aesthetically painful if she tried. And though anything is possible, a cursed ugly holiday sweater seems a little silly to be a nefarious plot device from a real villain.

That leaves only one culprit. Loki.

But that... also answers very few questions.

Steve hesitantly lays his bare hand on top of the sweater. Again nothing happens, so he scoops it up into his arms. It's very, very fluffy, and the reindeer's antlers are both felty and strangely firm. Steve decides to ignore them just as resolutely as he is ignoring the eyes. It's probably just some fancy magic trick, is all. Surely not even Loki could or would flatten a real reindeer into a sweater. That would be absurd. (Of all the questions Steve may or may not ask Loki when he finds him, how this sweater was made is not going to be one of them.)

Up two floors and past a long hallway of expansive windows is the main common area of the Compound. Steve will check for Loki there first, before heading over to Thor's living area. Loki doesn't have his own yet, because he and Thor both tend to stay more often in New Asgard, and when he's here he stays in his brother's rooms with him. It's become something of an adventure to go there uninvited.

It seems Steve is one of the last to arrive in the common area when he gets there. Thor is sitting on the couch reading quietly from a tablet, with Loki leaning back against the furniture in question right behind him. They look remarkably casual and domestic, as they usually do when in plainclothes together, which honestly is still surreal even after several months. Tony isn't here, but Bruce is behind the bar eating cereal even though it's almost five in the evening, Clint is on top of the bookshelf by the TV, Nat cross-legged on the floor below him, and Spiderman is crouching on the ceiling playing on a hand-held gaming device. Situation normal.

Excepting of course the fact that they all have sweaters.

(Well, Clint doesn't have a sweater, but Nat is holding two so one of those is almost definitely his.)

Bruce is wearing his sweater, and it's just as blinding as Steve's. It's vertically striped in gold and silver - but not as in the colors of gold and silver, or in any sort of normal lightly sparkly gold and silver that you'd expect to be possible in yarn. It's full-on, shiny and polished-looking as real metal gold and silver. And overlaid on top of those stripes in a haphazard repeating pattern are cartoonish sprigs of holly, mistletoe, and-

"Is that mary jane on yours?" Steve blurts. Not a question he was expecting to ask, when he got to asking. But there it is, busheled in with the more typical holiday cheer, big spiky leaves of joy weed.

"Yeah," Bruce says, through a mouthful of bran. "Loki made it." As if that's any explanation.

"Uh," says Steve. He looks at Loki, who is also wearing a sweater, and Loki smirks sharply at him. It's always hard to tell when Loki is pulling some harmless prank versus when he's planning world domination and/or destruction, because as far as Steve has been able to tell yet his smug expression is the same for both. The sweater he made for himself is not ugly of course. It looks like a perfectly normal non-magical sweater made out of yarn, first of all. The pattern on it is just stylized snowflakes in different sizes in various shades of blue with the occasional flake in dark red. It's certainly nothing you'd ever find in a store, not in those colors, but it doesn't stab into the eyeballs like Steve's or Bruce's.

"It's a traditional winter gift," Loki explains. His Very Serious Tone is marred by the way he can't stop showing his teeth. Is it just a smile? Probably. Does it activate Steve's fight response? Unfailingly. "Religious. I asked Ms. Potts first, you know, to make sure it would be appropriate. She said that if the Avengers wanted to continue using Mr. Stark's compound as their base that they would of course be inclusive and participate in any traditions that don't conflict with their own."

"Did you ask?" Steve wonders, thinking on how shrewdly Pepper would see through any wide-eyed looks of innocence or faux-insecurity from Loki. "Or did Thor ask?"

"We asked," says Loki, which answers that question. Steve does not put on the sweater.

"It's true about it being religious to give clothing before the solstice hits, though," Bruce says, undoubtedly knowing what Steve is thinking. "I read up on that stuff after the invasion." He says it so casually, like he's somehow been able to put it behind him, even though out of all of them he was arguably the one that Loki had targeted the most. Although, Steve supposes Bruce is also the one out of all of them who has had the most time to get to know Loki as he is now. The rest of them are still struggling to reconcile this new Loki (or is it the old Loki, from before Thor came to earth?) with the one they fought.

"It's very important," Loki adds, and he's wearing that wide-eyed look now, though he doesn't seem too invested in making Steve buy it. "If one doesn't receive the gift of new clothing before the darkest hour of the darkest night of the year, our mother's giant cats will eat them when they are loose on Midgard during the Hunt. Cats are too in tuned with Yggdrasil to be truly domesticated, you see. We could train them only so much."

"Giant cats," Steve repeats. "Giant, man-eating cats. From outer space."

"Their names are Bygul and Trjegul," Thor says, finally looking up from his tablet. He throws his arm over the back of the couch at Loki's hip to look at Steve from where he sits, allowing Steve to finally see his sweater. It's uglier than Loki's but not even a quarter as ugly as Steve's, pale pink and glittery with a black leopard print. Where Loki is still and serious in tone and body language but his mirth still can't be missed in his face, Thor speaks cheerfully but his eyes are flinty. "A gift is imbued with protective magic by nature, and new clothing signifies to the Cats that one would be missed and thus should be spared from their hunger. To refuse the gift of clothing before the Solstice is to say you would rather be cared for by no one at all than to be cared for by the giver."

"That... sounds pretty serious," Steve says. He looks back at Loki. Loki sticks out his lower lip. His eyes shine as brightly as the possessed reindeer on the sweater in Steve's arms. They start to water, even as the laughter in them stays lit, causing the look of hurt he's making to be what one might call unconvincing. But he tilts his head just so, subtly directing Steve's own eyes back to Thor. Thor's look is not hurt, but it is _very_ convincing.

"Thanks, Loki," Steve says, and pulls the sweater on over his head.

Instantly, warmth sinks deep into Steve's bones and he feels like if he took a nap right now he'd actually wake up refreshed and well rested for once. He blinks and looks at Loki again but this time Loki is looking away, his arms folded tight over his chest and hiding the biggest of the red snowflakes from view. But even Steve knows what a magic spell feels like. He wonders what else the sweater can do - what else Loki thought Steve needed. He smiles at Loki's profile, and resolves to try to get to know Loki the way Thor and Bruce do.

After nothing terrible or embarrassing happens to Steve, Nat deigns to put her own sweater on too. Steve's not surprised. She'd be more concerned about the magic than she ever would be about the look. Chances are pretty good that she might even actually like whatever hideous nonsense Loki put on hers. She shows it off to Steve with her own trademark smirk, looking like nothing more than that emoji she loves so much. It looks like it's incredibly scratchy, the texture of flat carpeting, but from how different Steve's sweater feels on him than it did in his arms he bets it's actually pretty comfortable. It's a screaming shade of magenta with cyan squiggles all over it that seemingly start to move if Steve looks too long. Who knows if that's the magic or if the pattern itself is just that dizzying.

"It looks like the floor of a blacklight skating rink," Nat says, and her smile grows so much a hint of her teeth show. Steve has never been to a skating rink, and he finds himself glad of the fact, if that's what it'd look like in one. He's glad she likes her gift though, and is curious about what Loki's magic in it is doing for her. He'll ask her later.

It takes nearly an hour for Steve and Nat to coax Clint down from on top of the bookshelf and get him to put his own sweater on. In that time Loki and Bruce have both migrated onto the couch with Thor. Thor is at one arm and Bruce at the other, and Loki is stretched out across both of their laps, his head in Thor's, and all three of them are reading with single-minded focus, Thor and Bruce from tablets and Loki from a gigantic book that floats over his face in the grip of the soft green glow of his magic. Every now and then Thor chuckles or Bruce makes a low sound of intrigue. Loki makes no sound and doesn't seem to blink, which makes it harder to convince Clint to come down, which Steve suspects is purposeful. Spiderman is on the window now, still playing on his device, which occasionally emits the voice of Ryan Reynolds saying something incongruously sweet and adorable. His sweater is covered in tarantulas that are even more realistic than Steve's reindeer, except for the fact that they are wearing Santa hats.

Eventually Steve and Nat win Clint over, but he makes sure everyone knows he's not happy about it. Natasha tugs his sweater on over his head with a racket. The racket is not from Clint, however. The color of his sweater isn't discernible with it right side out, because the whole entire thing is completely covered in jingle bells. Once it's finally on him, Clint folds his arms with a cacophony and scowls around at everyone. Steve's throat hurts from how hard he's holding in his laugh.

By the time that's done, it's creeping up on dinner time. Tony comes marching in from the elevator, sweater-clad and with his own tablet in hand. His sweater simply looks like the most recent Iron Man suit.

"Friday, order in whatever Vanilla Ice wants," he's instructing the room as he moves. Steve wrinkles his nose, hoping that 'Vanilla Ice' doesn't refer to him even if that means he doesn't get to pick the food.

"Sure thing, Boss," says the AI. "Mx. Odinsson, what would you like?"

"Eel," Loki says without lowering his book. Clint immediately demands to know if that's a joke, and at his outburst, or maybe at Loki's request, Tony finally looks up and sees the rest of their sweaters. His face goes on a journey as he realizes that the sweaters are all hideous, but it's too late to take back Loki's food-choosing privilege now that Tony has gotten the implied insult. Steve has to bite his lip at the way Tony stares flatly into the middle distance. He really should have known.

Soon enough all of their teammates have joined them in the common area, waiting for the mind boggling amount of sushi that Friday ordered to arrive. Each of them has a sweater on that either hurts the eyes to behold or simply is very trashy, like Pepper's bikini t-shirt sweater with skin that doesn't match her real shade. They eat together and when the food is dwindling Loki tells frankly horrific stories, complete with illusory depictions of the characters that light up the room in spooky green tones when they get brutally murdered by, as promised, giant man-eating space cats. Then Thor tells a much nicer story about how the cats saved his life in a blizzard and that was how he came to give them to his mother, and Loki illustrates that one too.

It's very late when they part, and Steve only kicks off his shoes before collapsing onto his bed back in his room. He sleeps deeply all night and doesn't have even one nightmare. He wakes only when the sun is high and bright, the golden light falling warmly over his face from his window. He sits up and looks over at his dresser where the holly shaped gift tag from his sweater is still sitting and smiles, soft and a little bit incredulous.

Slowly his smile changes though, to one he knows could give Loki himself a run for his money.

Steve reaches into his beside table for the little notepad he keeps there and a pen. He flips to the right page, the Christmas shopping list he wrote out and has been checking off for the last month.

'Hawaiian shirt,' he adds, 'for Loki' and laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> Come chill with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/penlex)!


End file.
